Tolerance
@Phaedra_Scythe (3325)
June 9, 2009 1:50pm CST
Do you find you're becoming more or less tolerant as you get older?
I think I'm still a cynic at heart, and I struggle not to see ulterior motives in everyone around me, but at the same time I find these days I'm more likely to empathise and try to understand people when my knee-jerk reaction is irritation. I suffer fools - if not gladly then with more sympathy - because it just seems it's too easy to criticise and write people off.
Do you take people at face value or do you try and understand where they might be coming from?
1 response
@derek_a (10873)
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10 Jun 09
I think intolerance is something I experienced a lot when I was younger but not so much now. I don't know whether it is getting older that has caused a change or meditation that I have been practising for the last 30 years or so. I think it is probably meditation because I have some friends who tell me that the older they are getting, the more intolerant they feel to others. So I tend to believe that tolerance is in the mind, and meditation deals with the mind. 
- Derek
- Derek 1 person likes this
@Phaedra_Scythe (3325)
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1 Sep 09
Learning to listen does wonders. I don't assume I know the right answer and I'm always pleasantly surprised by other points of view. I think this is part of it. Humility and empathy.
